Coix lacryma-jobi Seeds | Job’s Tears Tear Grass Adlay Adlai

Categories：Herb

Job's Tears seeds (Coix lacryma-jobi)

LATIN NAME: Coix lacryma-jobi

COMMON NAME: Job’s Tears

Plant Profile

Job’s Tears (Coix lacryma-jobi) is a tall, upright, annual in the grass family. The Job’s tears holds its drooping, beaded, hard, shiny seeds among broad, corn-like leaves, and small, greenish flowers open in the spikes. It is a grass of open, sunny, deep, moist, well-drained ground. Bees find the flowers quickly, and that pollinator traffic is a garden benefit in its own right. Plants that offer this much while asking this little are rare enough to treasure.

Science & Biotechnology

Job’s tears (yi yi ren) sits squarely on the food–medicine boundary: a gluten-free grain eaten across Asia, and a listed drug of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Its oil yielded the coix seed emulsion known as Kanglaite, which is approved in China as an adjunctive injection in cancer therapy — one of the very few botanical injections to reach that regulatory level — with trials reporting improved quality of life and possibly better response when combined with chemotherapy. The kernel’s coixenolide and polysaccharides are studied for anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects. As a food grain it is entirely benign.

Coix lacryma-jobi sits in the grass family, a group that keeps botanists, horticulturists and plant breeders busy with questions of classification, adaptation and ornamental potential. In practice, its long garden history means the grower inherits a plant of known and dependable habits.

Uses & Benefits

Gardeners value Job’s Tears for its ornamental character, and the plant also fits naturally into herb, vegetable and cutting gardens. The Job’s tears is a fine, generous grass of warm garden and study collection. It is a fine, generous grass of open, sunny, deep, moist, well-drained garden. Give young plants deep, moist bed, and bead-like seeds will come in the first warm season. Given the right start, it carries on with minimal intervention.

Job’s tears, Yi Yi Ren, is both a gluten-free grain food and a major Chinese herb for water balance and skin health; coix seed oil derivatives have even reached clinical use as adjunct cancer-support injections in China.

Growing from Seed

Raising Job’s Tears from seed is straightforward. Fill a pot with a light seed compost, sow evenly on the surface, cover thinly and stand it somewhere warm, bright and evenly moist. When the young plants are big enough to handle, space them into pots or a nursery row and let them size up before their final move.

Our Take

It grows as a tall, upright, annual, so its place in the garden is easy to plan. Even moisture while the seed is chitting is the main thing; afterwards it largely looks after itself.

Job's Tears (Coix lacryma-jobi) - picture 2

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